Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.”

— Thomas Paine

252. “Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.”

— Thomas Paine

253. “THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.”

— Thomas Paine

254. “A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.”

— Thomas Paine

255. “When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.”

— Thomas Paine

256. “The obscene and vulgar stories in the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a Divine Being, as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes to Him are repugnant to our ideas of His justice.”

— Thomas Paine

257. “Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstone of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might have lain forever undiscovered.”

— Thomas Paine

258. “The accumulation of great wealth is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it, the consequence of which is that the working people perish in old age and the employer abounds in affluence.”

— Thomas Paine

259. “Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.”

— Thomas Paine

260. “It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.”

— Thomas Paine

261. “Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan, by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!”

— Thomas Paine

262. “What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.”

— Thomas Paine

263. “Our present condition is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independence contending for dependence.”

— Thomas Paine

264. “A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.”

— Thomas Paine

265. “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”

— Thomas Paine

266. “The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.”

— Thomas Paine

267. “I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.”

— Thomas Paine

268. “Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.”

— Thomas Paine

269. “It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.”

— Thomas Paine

270. “The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly...”

— Thomas Paine

271. “When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order.”

— Thomas Paine

272. “Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.”

— Thomas Paine

273. “Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God; this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!”

— Thomas Paine

274. “And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.”

— Thomas Paine

275. “Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.”

— Thomas Paine

276. “Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”

— Thomas Paine

277. “The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.”

— Thomas Paine

278. “Society in every state is a blessing, but a government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

— Thomas Paine

279. “The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.”

— Thomas Paine

280. “Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.”

— Thomas Paine

281. “Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.”

— Thomas Paine

282. “Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.”

— Thomas Paine

283. “War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.”

— Thomas Paine

284. “The stupid texts of the Bible – from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.”

— Thomas Paine

285. “Virtues are acquired through endeavor, Which rests wholly upon yourself. So, to praise others for their virtues Can but encourage one’s own efforts.”

— Thomas Paine

286. “EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.”

— Thomas Paine

287. “For freemen like brothers agree; With one spirit endured, they one friendship pursued, And their temple was Liberty Tree.”

— Thomas Paine

288. “A bad cause will never be supported by bad means and bad men.”

— Thomas Paine

289. “Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.”

— Thomas Paine

290. “Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

— Thomas Paine

291. “Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.”

— Thomas Paine

292. “He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument.”

— Thomas Paine

293. “If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.”

— Thomas Paine

294. “It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.”

— Thomas Paine

295. “Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but it is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.”

— Thomas Paine

296. “When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.”

— Thomas Paine

297. “Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system.”

— Thomas Paine

298. “Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.”

— Thomas Paine

299. “We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.”

— Thomas Paine

300. “It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world.”

— Thomas Paine